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Saturday, August 4, 2012

Dr. Myers - 8/2/12

Today we met with Dr. Myers (Chief Surgeon of Pediatric Cardiology) at Penn State Childrens Hospital. We were surprised to have a meeting with him so quickly!

He was able to answer the questions we had. I'm sure we'll have more as we learn more. He will be doing Iain's surgery. Over the last 25 years, he has done a few hundred surgeries specifically on children with Tetralogy of Fallot. He does about 225 heart surgeries a year. In fact, we have a friend who Dr. Myers has done 3 surgeries over her childhood.

One of the reasons we chose to go ahead with Dr. Myers is his experience. Also, Dr. Consavage has a niece who needed life saving heart surgery when she was born. He had the option to send her to CHOP or PSU. He chose Dr. Myers for his own family. That spoke to us.

The plan is to get Iain as old as possible, up to 6 months. However, if his oxygen saturation begins to decline, then surgery is imminent.

His stats won't change necessarily from day to day, but could from week to week. This is why we will be seeing Dr. Consavage on a weekly basis. Normally once oxygen levels start going down, they don't plateau, they continue downward. This will probably be the first sign that he needs surgery sooner, rather than later. Other reasons he could have surgery sooner is if he has a "blue spell" or something on his Echo shows changes in Iain's heart.

We asked Dr. Myers, if we should stay at Moffitt, or pursue PSU's Pediatric Cardiology practice. He suggested we stick with Moffitt (Dr. Consavage worked at PSU 15 Years ago, alongside Dr. Myers). He believes that because it's a smaller practice, Iain will get better care. He will see the same Drs, (there are only 2 at Moffitt) rather than seeing so many, that Iain would rarely see the same Dr. at PSU.

We toured the Children's Hospital, the Pediatric ICU (where Iain will be after surgery) & Intermediary Care (where Iain should spend his last days in the hospital after surgery).

As many of you locally are aware, PSU is working on their brand new Childrens Hospital. If Iain doesn't get his surgery earlier than 6 months, we may be one of the first patients there! While we don't care so much about a nice new hospital, compared to a great surgeon, it would be pretty cool to be one of the first in a brand new hospital!